8 ms·

I'm happy about this! But, while repairability is always great, a major (maybe the biggest) part of phone obsolescence is due to software. 2 or 3 years of updat

• xigency 4y ago
  > 2 or 3 years of updates are a joke, Apple does up to 8. Saying an iPhone can handle 8 generations of iOS updates is a bigger joke. I’m a cheapskate that somehow uses Apple phones, and I’ll let you know after 2-3 major OS updates the performance is always severely diminished.
  • mortenjorck 4y ago
    This was very much the case a decade ago, when using an iPhone 3GS was a real slog by year 3 or 4, but is anyone still having those problems today? My daily driver is a 2018 iPhone XS, and it’s about as snappy with iOS 16 as I remember it being straight out of the box.
    • dmix 4y ago
      My dad uses a 5yr old iPhone X and it runs perfectly fine with the latest software updates. The baseline CPU (and RAM) quality has improved dramatically since around then where it's not a big deal to upgrade. Or maybe the software has matured enough. My mom had a 3yr old mid-teir Samsung phone and tablet (combo deals they always sell) they both became unusable when it upgraded to the latest version of Samsung basterdized Android 2 months ago. But I'm sure Pixels are more similar to iPhone. Sadly most Android come with vendor crippled software. Maybe the >2yr crippling is the goal for them.
      • bombolo 4y ago
        Don't worry, pure android versions also made my phone slow.
  • bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
    Are you sure it's not just that the battery has aged after a few years? I've of heard many people (myself included) getting their battery replaced and saying their phone felt like new.
    • commandersaki 4y ago
      I use an 6S that I bought in 2016. It is on its 4th battery replacement. So I've got almost a full 7 years out of it. It won't receive any major iOS updates anymore, but will still receive security updates. I'd continue down this path for another 2 years, but as a non-iCloud user I want iCloud Advanced Data Protection to sync Notes and Messages.
    • cvalka 4y ago
      https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-turn-off-battery-throttling-on-your-iphone/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-turn-off-battery...
  • natdempk 4y ago
    If you make a claim like this can you provide details? My anecdote: I'm using an iPhone XS that has seen 4+ years of use across iOS 12-16 (5 major versions) and I haven't noticed any real consistent slowdowns. I've seen the occasional clear bug shipped where performance dips from time to time doing certain specific things, but these seem to be resolved upon the next update or two usually.
  • hot_gril 4y ago
    I felt this way with the 6 because it got downthrottled into the ditch with iOS-whatever, but my 5 (which I actually got after the 6 cause it, uh, accidentally broke) was a perfect phone its entire support life. I even kept it past Apple support limits and only left it when my cell carrier stopped working with it entirely. I think with newer ones, the OS updates are fine.
  • paulmd 4y ago
    No. Your phone becomes damaged (DRAM and flash and performance problems due to battery) but the phone itself usually is fine. I just got a whole new phone out of a failed battery replacement for my iphone 8+ - my guess is the OS installation was just too damaged to accept the battery pairing process and it just flaked out, it was bootlooping and refusing to charge the battery. I got a refurbished 8+ in consideration, and it's actually great despite being a 5.5 year old release at this point. It's not the actual performance level of the phone itself that's the problem, they just tend to become worn out at a hardware level and the phone tends to become unstable. It was showing all kinds of weird software quirks (discord "send" button would fail to appear when posting a meme despite the image being in the send box, and you'd have to tab back and forth to a different server before the "send" button would show up, etc) and all of that vanished as soon as I got a new phone. While I can't prove it, my opinion is it would have come back over time even if I did a factory reset, perhaps even worse. Because I had the same experience with my previous phone, an Android Moto G first-gen (Falcon), which I owned for just about 5 years exactly (early 2014-early 2019). The phone simply got more and more unstable due to bad flash/RAM and perhaps some glitching caused by the weak battery... first I'd have to factory reset once in a while, then the whole OS would need to be reflashed, finally the installs were being corrupted less than a day after a clean reflash. The practical lifespan of the DRAM/flash in a phone seems to be about 3-4 years in my experience and by the time things hit 5 years they are so damaged they are unusable even after fresh OS installs/etc. The timeframe is identical for both my Moto G and the 8+, I bet if I'd continued to use the same handset for another year it'd have started corrupting itself even after a factory reset/etc. I don't know why that would be - whether phones are writing certain flash cells too much and they're burning out, or what. Obviously PC SSDs and DRAM can be fine for a decade. I am very onboard with some degree of refurbishment being a critical element of long-term phone repair after these experiences. They start to go janky at 3 years, by 4 years it is becoming a problem, and by 5 years it is unusable. Even with clean software installs (factory resets or OS image reflashes), it just is not stable. The Moto G I could write off as a fluke, it was a cheap phone to begin with, maybe it was just janky. The 8+ failing in the exact same ways on a very similar timeline (about 6-12 months later due to higher hardware quality) says to me that DRAM or flash is just wearing out over time. If it was just battery performance problems then it wouldn't have failed to re-pair after a fresh battery was installed either. Again, now that I've got a refurbished 8+ in like new condition, I can tell you it's still perfectly fine as a phone/piece of hardware, it's more than fine enough to run discord and apollo and gmail and banking and all the other things I do day-to-day. It's not the hardware spec that's the problem, it's a particular unit becoming worn and failing. This also goes to show the importance of long-term software support... I have basically a new handset on 5.5 year old hardware. It will probably be 10 years old before I retire it. iOS is insanely good about that, I am still receiving full software updates at this point, although probably not for that much longer. Show me an Android phone with 6-7 years of feature updates, please. Most androids won't even get security updates for half of that. That is what keeps the e-waste down. I'm sure my handset will be diagnosed and refurbished and sent out to someone else for replacement too, or sent to APMA region for those customers, the circle of life. I paid $725 for the phone originally (refurb) and $49 for the replacement, and I just got my third otterbox commuter for the replacement case, probably will kill a 4th one over the life of this handset too. So all-up I am expecting to be around $900 for all hardware expenditures for this phone for 9-10 years. Not too awful overall.
• scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  Psh 5 years? What kind of standard of quality is that? We should have several decades of support for all cheap electronics at least…
  • Spivak 4y ago
    And they hated him because he spoke the truth. Phones being disposable is something we just accepted. A POTS phone bought in the 1890’s would work without modification until the 1990’s and still will work today with an adapter. Why? Because we didn’t have continuous protocol churn. If it was invented today in 2 years there would POTS/2, KETTLE, and a draft spec for POTS2.1 written on a used napkin but somehow already in production at Google. Our stuff turns to trash because everything is built on shifting sand with no thoughts given to supporting it long term and for some reason we like it this way. Do y’all not long for a future where you can get off the upgrade treadmill because the developer facing API is fixed? Not backwards compatible because that implies you ought to be moving to the next, like once it works you can call it done. But new shiny thing! Alright, that’s great. Is it so much better that you want everyone in the world to throw away their old devices? Probably eventually but you’re daft if you think those kinds of events should be every few years. God can you imagine if we did that to cars? Sorry, Honda dropped support for your Civic, you can keep using it for a bit but in a year we’re gonna change the roads and it will be undrivable.
    • bitwize 4y ago
      > Do y’all not long for a future where you can get off the upgrade treadmill because the developer facing API is fixed? Not backwards compatible because that implies you ought to be moving to the next, like once it works you can call it done. No. We want modern APIs that prioritize modern concerns, usable with modern toolkits and frameworks and taking advantage of modern programming principles. Even if we had an API intended for longevity, once its creators die we will tear it down completely and replace it with something that suits our newer-therefore-better tastes. For them it was the cornerstone of an industry's worth of innovations; for us it is but a millstone around our necks and must be replaced. I know this because I've seen it happen many times. Once the people who've staked their entire careers building upon $THING, and developed some truly remarkable software, grow old, up rises the chorus of people who are sick of $THING, who can't even fathom how anyone got anything done with $THING, who give talks at conferences about how $THING is fundamentally broken and how we should be using $NEWTHING instead. And these voices grow louder, their chants more thunderous, until it's generally accepted that $THING is a relic and $NEWTHING is the future. Even the things we thought would last forever -- POSIX, C, X11 -- are now, if anything, well past their expiration date. This is how things are. This is how they must be. There is naught we can do but be like a Japanese person observing the seasons, contemplating, with some sadness, the constant change and the endless cycle of death and rebirth.
• riku_iki 4y ago
  > The real next innovation for an Android device maker will be providing at least 5 years of updates pixels starting with pixel 6 have 5 years of updates.
  • nevi-me 4y ago
    It's unavailable in many markets. Even if one imports it, there's a risk that it becomes unrepairable (or costly to repair) if it breaks.
  • psydvl 4y ago
    Oneplus 11 ships with same support (5 years android updates + 4 years security updates)
    • schemescape 4y ago
      Wait, OnePlus provides 9 years of security updates? That is huge! Apple’s update policy (and history) is one of the two reasons I own an iPhone (SE). The other reason being all the unremovable junkware I’ve had on Android phones in the past. Next time I need to upgrade (hopefully 6+ years in the future), I will take another look at OnePlus.
      • riku_iki 4y ago
        The big issue is that OpenPlus is Chinese company, so they can install some backdoor on your phone anytime if CCP will ask. It may be safer to have another phone without security updates.
  • kuschku 4y ago
    And require me to throw away headphones that have worked fine for decades. Even this nokia phone has a 3.5mm port, why doesn't Google support it anymore?
    • riku_iki 4y ago
      there are connectors. > why doesn't Google support it anymore? maybe preserve space for something else inside.
• IceWreck 4y ago
  Its a 150 EUR phone, what more do you expect >
  • abliefern 4y ago
    I expect manufacturers not to offer bad options like a 150 € phone with 3 years of updates. Give me a 200€ phone with 5 years? Or a 10€ service fee per year of updates.
    • lucb1e 4y ago
      The problem is: you and ten other persons might genuinely pay for that after three years (also considering the specs of this thing). In silicon valley, I suspect devs can't open up their env for that money and still put food on the table in the evening after paying for their morning outdoor coffee and rent. I'm curious how much work honestly goes into these updates, though. How many patches do they maintain on top of Android that security updates would cause them to need to fix their patches again? Or how many parts of Android are even changed by those updates in a given month? I don't really have any idea of either proportion. How much money would it require us to pool to get one month longer security updates? One year? May be something to ask Fairphone, they seem like the type of business that might be willing to share this for the purpose of pressuring the market to offer the support after a successful crowdfunding campaign.
  • solarkraft 4y ago
    At least 5 years of updates. So much so that I think it should probably be legally mandated and clearly marketed as the device's life span.
    • paulmd 4y ago
      Yes, EU needs to step in and deal with the software lifespan problems on Android just as they have with ports and repairability on Apple. It is obvious that this is a market failure leading to negative social outcomes (e-waste) and phone vendors clearly are not going to deal with it on their own. This really should be from date-of-purchase and not date-of-launch as well. Otherwise you're leaving refurbished phones out in the cold too. We should be encouraging refurbishment and not giving those users a worse experience - if anything the law should attempt to favor them, they're doing the thing we want. Requiring bootloader unlock when support ceases is another fantastic idea someone pointed out - and that one will hit Apple too honestly. But if you're not going to support the thing then at least let someone else do it.
• matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Wish these chip makers would start playing nice with the Linux kernel already. They should me mainlining their drivers before their products are even releaaed.
• hot_gril 4y ago
  When you optimize around something that's more of an interest than a need, you get results that don't make a lot of sense, like a stick-shift electric car. The Indian market has a legitimate reason for repairable phones, so they have a solution that makes sense in terms of cost and usability.